Guenther Steiner shares Max Verstappen red flag as 'difficult to manage' verdict delivered

Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has said that Max Verstappen could be hard to manage if the Red Bull is not competitive in the 2025 F1 season. The Dutch driver is coming into the 2025 season on the back of four consecutive titles.

The last one, however, was arguably his hardest, as he didn't have the best car on the grid after the first 6-7 races. For the 2025 F1 season, the pre-season has not been ideal for Red Bull. The team was not satisfied with how the testing went, as the car quite clearly appeared to be a step slower than McLaren.

Guenther Steiner feels that if the car is not upto the mark, Max Verstappen could be tough to manage because the driver has the tendency to say things as they are and that can be a concern.

Even in 2024, Max Verstappen took some time accepting the fact that the Red Bull was not going to be the best car on the grid. There were races where the driver lashed out at the team as well, including the race in Hungary.

Warning that managing Max Verstappen could be an issue if Red Bull has not built a car capable of fighting for the title, Steiner told CNN,

“I would say last year, when he started not to win, he reacted, pretty aggressively. But then at some stage, I think he realised, ‘I need to be smart about this and just take home as many points as I can, even if I’m not winning a race’."

He added,

“So we need to see which Max we get. But for sure, if he hasn’t got a good car where he can win, he will get very difficult to manage as well, I would say, because he will be vocal about it that he’s not happy. And an unhappy Max is not a nice Max, as we all know."

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Bad news for Max Verstappen as Red Bull shares gloomy outlook

The start of the season has not been as positive as Max Verstappen would have hoped. Red Bull director Pierre Wache admitted that the team was not entirely happy after the pre-season test. Talking to the media, Wache had conceded that the car did not behave exactly as the team had hoped. He said,

“It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car,”

He added,

“The weather was not with us and not very representative of this track, but we tried to explore the potential of the car and tried to understand how it responds to different set-ups, and I think we more or less achieved that."

It's going to be an intense championship battle this season. It remains to be seen how Max Verstappen approaches it as every race is going to be crucial when it comes to extracting the best from the car.